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Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

Thomas Pynchon

Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Dreams Essence Stupidity
Some of us are afraid of dying; others of human loneliness. Profane was afraid of land or seascapes like this, where nothing else lived but himself.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Afraid Death Himself Human Land Live Lonely Sea
Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Break Care Help Logic Public Yourself
Information. What’s wrong with dope and women? Is it any wonder the world’s gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Amazing exchange Information Reality Sanity Woman Wonderful Wrong
The reality is in this head. Mine. I’m the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, and sometimes other orifices also.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Eyes Head Reality Universe Visible
Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Accident Lesson Life Man Sanity Time
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Question Worry Wrong Yourself
All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Animal Break Freedom Healing Kind Loud Nature Plant Preserve Theory
Real flight and dreams of flight go together. Both are part of the same movement. Not A before B, but all together.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Connection Dreams Movement Reality Togetherness
It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Beginning Character Force Simplicity Try Wrong
Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Early Ignorance Life Ourselves Structure Trouble Writing
Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Book Reading Time Wasted Time Yourself
If patterns of ones and zeros were ‘like’ patterns of human lives and death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Computer Creature Death Human Kind Live Mathematics Patten Record Representation
Why should things be easy to understand?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Easy Philosophy Understand
She thougt of sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Education Herself Rise See Structure Sun Thinking
It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Blessing Desire Empty Man Woman

Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

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Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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